Wedding Video Regrets
Whilst some couples may scoff at the subject of wedding videos, there are many reasons to take this area of your wedding planning very seriously. To help you identify some of the pitfalls and mistakes others have made in the run up to their wedding, we have put together some useful facts to bear in mind.
Not Having a Wedding Video
In a recent survey commissioned by the international Wedding & Event Videography Association (WEVA) only 23% of brides believed a professional wedding video was important when planning their wedding. However after their wedding day, 60% of brides who did not have a wedding video said they regretted it. Furthermore, of those brides who were fortunate to use a professional videographer, 95% thought future brides should consider having a wedding video.
At Bloomsbury Films, we know these statistics from first hand experience. After every wedding we film, our clients simply cannot wait to get their hands on the finished wedding DVD. The huge build-up to the day, turns into an equally big vacuum when they realise it is over in a flash! Only at this moment, do they discover the importance of their wedding video and how it is the only way to bring the whole day back.
Amateur Wedding Video
A painful mistake made by many brides and grooms is to assume that a wedding video produced by a friend or relative will be anywhere near as good as they thought. Firstly anyone who is a guest at your wedding will find it very hard to stay focused and committed to filming your entire day. Goodwill will fade straight after the ceremony once the champagne is flowing, and before you know it, the camera will be abandoned on a table while everybody is having the time of their lives.
Even if your well-intended guest turns out to be a teetotal party-pooper, you can be certain that he or she will find successful wedding videography takes a lot more planning and practice than expected. Anyone can stand up and point a handycam, but producing a wedding video requires technical details that an amateur videographer will overlook in the heat of the moment. This could include poor or muffled audio, missing the vows, underexposed images, shaky camera or the date and time code stamped throughout. Such basic technical issues are nothing to the more complex issues of storytelling, camera positioning, framing and composition that make up a good wedding video.
In conclusion, a wedding video produced by a well-meaning amateur is rather like going to the cinema to see the latest blockbuster by Steven Spielberg’s bedridden aunt. Unless you are prepared for disappointment, don’t even think about asking an amateur to film your wedding!
Wedding Videos Are Boring
Anyone who has been forced to watch their friends wedding video only to find time standing still as it laboriously meanders through their day will be forgiven for thinking wedding videos are boring! The fact is there are a lot of badly produced wedding videos around, a fact not helped by the many cheap or amateur videographers artlessly knocking them out. However wedding videos aren’t inherently boring – indeed the subject matter, people, spectacle and emotion make for a fantastic story! What makes a wedding video boring is only the way it is made.
Fortunately the perception of wedding videos is changing as people increasingly hire experienced video producers like Bloomsbury Films to create their special wedding video. Only a skilled film-maker will understand how to tell your story through images, will have planned the filming in advance and know how to edit the final DVD in an interesting and entertaining way. Before writing off the concept as dull, check out some of the wedding video samples on our website and see that your wedding video could be the most meaningful and enjoyable film you ever own on DVD.
Wedding Videos Are Expensive
Anything that is individual, thoughtful and well-crafted involves a high degree of personal attention that costs a lot compared to mass produced goods. Whilst there is no doubt that a good wedding video is not cheap, it is important to consider it in the context of the cost of your whole wedding day and your long-term family history. For a while, wedding video has been a rather undervalued afterthought for couples, when in fact it is the most tangible way of preserving this once-in-a-lifetime experience.
The effort and expense that goes into your day all too quickly fades into fragments of memory that will leave you wishing you had properly invested in preserving it forever. Often overlooked is the fact that for most of us a wedding video is the only time in our lives we will ever commission a family documentary. Over time, this will become a unique piece of family history that both preserves a defining moment in our lives and is something that will entertain us again and again in the future.
In life we may often spend money on disposable things we later regret, but the money you spend on your wedding video will never be wasted or regretted.
Can you fix our Wedding Film?
During the course of the year, we receive many calls from anxious brides and grooms who have had their wedding poorly filmed by amateurs or so-called professionals. They ask if we can re-edit or in some way fix their wedding film after discovering the short cuts they have taken have left them severely disappointed. Often willing to spend considerable sums of money reviving their precious memories, we always regret to decline such projects.
There is very little anyone can do to turn a botched wedding video into a polished piece of art. Unlike some competitors, we don’t rely on cheap post-production effects to dress up bad wedding videography. Instead we hope that anyone reading this article will heed the pitfalls of cutting corners and ensure they don’t desperately regret not properly planning their wedding video beforehand.
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